


Static In the Wires

by ABTwrites



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Rating to Change, Slow Burn, Team Talon (Overwatch), kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 20:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19730887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABTwrites/pseuds/ABTwrites
Summary: Aftermath of Infiltration. Sombra, Reaper and Widowmaker head back to headquarters after a failed mission. An unexpected fight breaks out on the plane, and Sombra realizes there's more to her teammate than she thought.





	Static In the Wires

“It’s cos you tripped the security system with your big, metal boots. You weren’t careful enough.” Sombra waved a casual hand at Reaper, sweeping specks of snow off her shoulders as she entered the bay doors of the cargo jet.

Black smoke plumed from the man’s feet, sending billows up into Sombra’s face. She coughed, shooing it away, as he stalked to his seat. She prodded his shoulder as he passed, but to no avail; the injuries he’d sustained in the fight took the edge off his rage.

“That was your job,” he growled, flexing his clawed hands in front of his mask.

“Tomato, tom-ah-to,” she dismissed. “It went sideways, whatever. Volskaya will be exposed again and it’ll be like this whole thing never happened.”

It was hard to suppress her elation. He didn’t know what she was up to. A scot-free scam in her favor, another name under her thumb. Another bigwig traitor with too much money bowing down to her. It was good to be on top, especially with people like Volskaya. A total victory.

But if she was being honest, it’d be nice to get to gloat about it.

The giant trapdoor of the vessel locked shut with a clang and they were airborne. Reaper was preparing a report into his earpiece, recording their failure for whatever faceless entity thought it was important. Maximillian, Akande, the names changed but the outlooks never did.

Sombra peered out the cabin window, curling a bit of her hair in her finger idly. The snow was pretty, gave everything below a clean sort of look.

Her heels bounced. She felt so energized.

Inward, she willed her brain to calm down and be chill. They failed, remember. Don’t get stupid now. Eager to busy herself, she looked around the cabin for something to do.

In the far corner bench, Widowmaker was sat down, staring at, well. Was she ever staring at anything specifically?

Perfect. Sombra had just about forgotten the other woman had been there. Her role was so periphery that she’d disappear and reappear and you didn’t have to worry about what she’d been up to, only that she was doing what she was told.

She started over to her.

Sombra hesitated. Widowmaker didn’t acknowledge her.

She halted mid-step and turned back to the window, blood running cold. A realization pierced through the hacker like an icy bullet.

It was so unlikely. A miniscule chance. Tiny. Tiny. Yeah, it couldn’t have happened. Sombra’s toes balled up in her shoes, she chewed her lip.

She was so easy to forget about.

Widowmaker, up on her perch, watching through her sniper scope.

Watching. Waiting, with unnatural patience and precision.

Watching everything, through her eight Infrasight eyes.

Long fingers squeezed Sombra’s heart tight, throttling her pulse.

Suddenly, it wasn’t a chance anymore. It was crystal clear reality. How could she forget about the eyes? How? It would have taken so little effort to interfere with the headset before the mission. A swipe of the hand, just to disengage the visor mechanism. It would have been _easy._

A rookie error. She forgot. She _forgot_.

Widowmaker hadn’t made a sound since they boarded.

She knew. She definitely knew.

Okay, solutions. The usual. Blackmail, hurt, evade.

Evade, yeah. She could run. And spend the rest of her life with Talon’s silent, stalking, deadshot sniper hunting her through open windows miles away. Hurt, maybe. But she’d seen Widowmaker break legs and necks with just as much deftness as her rifle and she didn’t fancy herself an especially talented fighter, not compared to whatever Terminator shit Talon had pulled with the other woman.

Blackmail. Her strongest option in every case. She had the keys to every city, the dirt on every important person on Earth, at her fingertips.

Well.

She’d put her head through the window if it wouldn’t attract so much attention.

Blackmail with what? It’d be like blackmailing a turret, or a fridge! She had half a mind to think Talon hung her up in the coat closet between missions. If she had something, anything _, literally anything_ going on outside of ‘do this mission, shoot this person, be our breathing gun’, Sombra had to think she’d know about it by now. A first-generation Bastion would be easier to blackmail.

The pit in her stomach sunk deeper as she explored her options, doors slamming in her face as soon as they cracked open.

Okay, relax.

If she really knew, Sombra had to fix it before they got back to HQ. No doubt she’d tell the people in charge. Of course she would. She probably didn’t even have a choice in the matter.

Bleak. The pit sunk again. It really couldn’t have been a worse person.

Another option.

The ‘name your price’ route. Maybe Widowmaker, under all that emotional sand, had something she wanted.

She had the repeated urge to just jump out the window and hope for the best.

God, the chances of that were so fucking small. Yeah, she emoted once and a while. Does she want to emote more? More freedom? More, ugh, bullets? More vitamin slurry? Fucking motor oil for her creaky joints?

Half those things she literally could not give, at least not without significant personal risk. And they were all stupid options.

Did she, could she want for anything? Was she a person enough to do that?

But she had to do _something!_

Inhale.

Exhale.

She gave the glass a practice smile. It looked awful. She tried again, and spun on her heel back to Widowmaker.

She was still staring at the wall from her seat. Typical. At least she wasn’t acting different. Or _would_ she act different? Her poker face was just her own dead-eyed staring, and that was her normal face, too-

“Hey there, Spider,” she grinned, throwing herself down in the seat next to her.

The stoic woman did not regard her.

“It’s chilly all over today, huh?” She waved a hand in front of Widowmaker’s face.

Tawny, bright eyes swiveled to her. Her head didn’t move at all.

“Uh.” She had to stop herself from shivering. “Jeez, you and Gabe. Depressed over the mission, too?”

Not a twitch, not a breath. A statue with moving eyes.

Okay. That’s it. She’s gotta know. She definitely knows. Just make a deal now before this all turns south-

“I missed.”

Sombra brain went still.

“Huh?”

“I missed.”

Sombra’s face scrunched up.

“You missed…the shot?”

Her eyes flicked back to the wall.

It was so subtle that Sombra hadn’t noticed right away, wrapped up in her own frantic planning. She could see it now that they were sitting so close.

On an almost invisible level, Widowmaker was shaking. Her breaths were silent and so shallow that her chest didn’t rise with them. And her eyes, cool and telling, were open just a hair’s fraction wider than usual, pupils pulled down into tiny pinpricks. 

The squeezing on Sombra’s heart loosened.

“That’s why you’re so silent? Well, not that you aren’t always silent. You’re just bothered by a missed shot? Come on.” She playfully nudged her with an elbow, savoring the sudden rush of relief tumbling through her veins. She missed the shot. That explains it.

She said nothing. She didn’t budge.

Eager to probe, Sombra leaned over the space between them and patted her leg, grinning.

“Don’t be so down-“

The hacker had a pathetic second of insight between the open hand colliding with the side of her face and the momentum of it slamming her into the plane’s floor. Widowmaker, suddenly and disturbingly mobile, mounted the girl’s waist. She looked down at her with her wide, unsettling stare, features unchanged.

Wait. Not unchanged.

She looked _wrong._

“I missed,” she hissed again. It sounded like it crawled up her throat on a thousand squirming legs.

Shocked, Sombra laid prone as Widowmaker’s opposite hand moved to cover her own face. The shaking worsened. She looked as if she’d burst at any moment, like something would come ripping out of her skin.

She could have struck her again by now. She could have.

Black smoke plumed.

Widowmaker was thrown backwards. Sombra gasped loudly, stunned. She sat up, scrambling to her feet like the next hit was chasing her heels, and turned back to the scene with wild focus.

Reaper had Widowmaker against the wall, shoulders flared into thick clouds of tumultuous fog. Her face was still a glassy visage. His clawed glove braced her by the jaw.

“Amelie,” he growled. “Stop it.”

She laughed at the ceiling.

Sombra had never heard her laugh before. It chilled her, it reminded her of glass shattering against a concrete floor, sharp and wild. It wasn't the kind of laugh a normal person would make, but it certainly didn't sound like it came from the Widowmaker either. Something else was happening, something she wasn't privy to.

\-----

She wasn’t looking at him.

The tremors shook her head to toe. He felt the cold skin of her jaw tighten under his hand as a low, piercing laugh snaked out from between her teeth.

She had pulled the trigger. The rush of feeling began, the reward of sensation that came to her with every kill. It was there.

And it had been ripped away millimeters from her fingertips. Her heart, hungry for the rush, seized up into a palpating mass of ill-paced beats. Her brain withdrew into ice water, nerve fried. Her senses sharpened to the point of pain.

She jerked as her body betrayed her, nerves misfiring.

O’Deorain knew this would happen. Missing was not permitted. Success was rewarded, failure was punished, immediately.

He felt a stone sink in his chest.

She wasn’t there anymore. She probably couldn’t even see him, couldn’t tell where she was or who she was. It wasn’t Widowmaker laughing, it was Amelie, halfway out and screaming for her seconds of freedom that had been denied.

He hated doing this. He knew O’Deorain knew that, too.

Reaper raised his opposite hand to her shoulder, supporting her to the wall, and with his other reached behind her head and depressed a small panel on her headset. Moira had told him how to do this. Knowing she’d already be suffering by the time he knew when it was necessary.

His claw touched something soft. He pressed it. A vial of liquid flowed out of the panel and into her head.

The effects were instant, just as the doctor had said they would be. Her body stopped shaking, her face hardened into its familiar stoic mask. She didn’t struggle against his grasp and it was depressingly unsurprising; she wouldn’t struggle unless she was commanded to do so.

She trained her yellow eyes on his mask. Waiting.

He moved back to give her space and she sat down in the seat she had been in at the beginning, as if nothing had happened.

Sombra watched, dumbfounded, from the other end of the cargo dock. Words were stuck in her throat, demands for explanations overshadowed with the anxiety of being trapped. 

“What was that?” she whispered insistently at Reaper as he passed her coming back to his seat. “What the hell was that?”

“Be quiet,” he growled, taking his seat again as well. She balked at him, wanting to demand an actual answer, as he went back to recording his report. She dared to cast another glance to the other woman. Back to staring, even more blank than before. She straightened her back and swallowed whatever fear was sticking to her insides. 

Faulty wiring? Static sending missed signals? Had she been the enemy for a moment? It was hard to put a finger on it without more information. But, knowing that there _was_ more information was enticing.

If she didn't get her neck snapped between her and HQ, maybe she had a new pet project.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing. This was written for a patron in my Patreon discord a few months back. Might continue it, if people tell me to.


End file.
